“People who are cocky and arrogant say, “I know that” and move along. People who are confident and positive ask themselves, “How good am I at that?” and seek to improve” –Jeffrey Gitomer

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I got asked this question by one of my business coaching clients the other day and felt that it was a good one to include here:

Q: I’ve heard in a previous interview where you mention that billing ‘by the hour’ is irrelevant when it comes to training people. I just can’t get my head around this — how do you charge people and why isn’t time still a factor? Do you call the workouts “mini-sessions” or something?

A: When you want to travel cross country in the USA — you can choose a flight, or you can choose a bus right?

The bus takes way longer than a flight — but costs less. It’s not about the length of time — it’s about the destination — the result — and how it is delivered. In this case — it’s the REVERSE of billing by time — as the shortest time costs the most money.

A haircut? The barber or hairdresser completes the task and is paid by the task – not by how long it takes. A doctor? Does he or she charge you more if they talk to you for longer? Experts don’t get paid by the hour – they get paid by the result.

Back to training – where did an hour of training come from anyway? Is there a science journal out there that I don’t know about that showed an hour of training to be more effective than 50 minutes?

An hour is just a measure of time. What you are really doing within that hour is X number of sets of Y number of reps right? Let’s say you do 8 exercises, 3 sets of 10 reps each for 24 total sets and 240 total reps.

Then someone else hires you — and when designing their program you come up with 7 exercises, and 3 sets of 8 reps each. 21 total sets and 168 total reps.

Does the second client get a discount because they did “less”? Of course not. You are using a tool to deliver the result. If you design a perfect program that can be done in 45 minutes — do you add another 33% more work to fill in the time (and thereby move away from your perfect program)?

“You don’t get paid for the hour — you get paid for the value you bring to that hour”

I’d even go beyond that.

The lowest paid people in the world think that they get paid for the hour of work. That’s why they stay low paid. The guy who works at the grocery store thinks he’s getting paid for the hours he stands there. And until he changes that paradigm he’ll always be a low paid ‘by the hour’ worker.

More successful people think like Jim Rohn and they think they get paid for the value that they create within that time frame.

The most successful people understand that the time spent is irrelevant, it’s ONLY the value. So they no longer think in terms of time — and if they do — it’s in reverse — that getting the job done faster is worth more.

If I can deliver the perfect training program to get your result in 30 mins, and another coach needs an hour — am I not worth more? I can deliver the result in half the time that they can – I should be worth at least twice as much.

In training (and in most things – including business) the result is the ONLY thing that matters — designing programs or charging ‘by the hour’ is not thinking about value first. I actually pride myself on making the workouts no longer than they need to be. In my opinion doing one extra set is far worse than not doing enough.

So what do I call a 45 min training session?

Same as what I call a 35 min training session. A training session.

Write workouts that work and deliver results. Don’t write workouts to fill in a slot of time.

If you haven’t gained more information – then someone who did will eventually and unquestionably take a bite out of your business.

Because the one thing that is truer than ever — is that things are changing fast.

I recently read something from a fitness coach who claimed that most seminars are a waste of time and he doesn’t read books. Do you think he’s growing as a professional when his entire educational input is just his own experiences? Doubtful.

Open your business in competition with a guy like that, keep educating yourself and you’ll inevitably succeed. Because over the long term, guaranteed – he’s going to fail.

I think there are definite parallels between work and fitness training. Over the past few years I think as a whole, in both areas, we’ve confused working “hard” with working long.

Think about someone you know who you’d describe as working hard for a living. Now – do they really work hard – i.e. back breaking, intense physical labor — or do you mean that they work long hours – nights and maybe weekends?

Working “hard” and working “long” are not the same. And neither one means working effectively.

You could make the case that someone who is working long hours and weekends to achieve their objectives may not necessarily be working hard at all — they may be doing completely ineffective activities.

In addition, their rate of actual quality work output may be very low on a minute-by-minute basis. Or quality output may not be frequent enough — so they are trying to compensate by increasing their total volume.

But just increasing the volume of an ineffective, low-quality (i.e. intensity), infrequent activity isn’t helping whatsoever. Effective, results-producing work is not dependent upon the total volume of work primarily.

It’s the same as effective, results-producing exercise:

Effectiveness first. Intensity second. Frequency Third.
Volume last.

Is your training effective?
Are you focused and striving to do more work/lift more weight/do more reps in the session?
Are you training regularly? (in all studies – frequency of exposure to a stimulus is a primary key to success).

Once you have effective and technically sound exercise, performed with appropriate intensity on a regular basis – then you can think about adding volume. Doing more work can’t replace effectiveness, intensity or consistency.

I talked about this before – about how we learn differently in high school than is applicable in the real world. For example – we’re not allowed to consult our text books or ask other people for the answer during tests — yet in the real world that’s exactly what you’d do.

It got me thinking about other things we learn in school:

Joined-up handwriting (cursive). Geography. History. Art History. English literature. Algebra. The anatomy of a fruit fly.

I can honestly say that I don’t use any of these at all on a daily basis.

Things I didn’t learn:

I didn’t even learn to drive in school (although they do teach that in the US).

How many more real world skills should we be teaching in school instead of some of the stuff we are teaching?

Another thought — if you take home your grades from high school and you get five B+ grades – everyone is happy. But if you take home a report that had one A+ and four C’s – you’ll be in trouble.

Why? The real world rewards specialists – not generalists. Our accountant is excellent. I don’t care how good she is at biology, driving or art. I want an accountant who is GREAT at what she does – a specialist.

Why reward “well-rounded” generalists when in reality we want specialists?

— AC PS – I wonder what my English teacher (who very much disliked my thoughts on Ernest Hemingway’s work – my essay in other words) would think now that I’ve had ten books published and might just be the most successful writer she had in that class ?

I was talking to Dax Moy a few years ago about “accelerating” client progress and we came to an interesting conclusion…

I think we’ve all been brainwashed into thinking that the only way to improve results is by pushing forward harder.

Think of a car with the parking brake on. You push the gas harder you’ll only run out of fuel quicker right? Take off the brake and with no more energy (less even) the car will go further and faster.

Removing the negative factors will improve your results far more than another set of squats, bench presses or sprints ever will.

Looking to accelerate progress is pointless when the brakes are still on.

For example – adding an extra workout day and 15 mins interval training post-workout is an acceleration tool.

But if you skip breakfast before weight training –any acceleration techniques may only create a further detrimental situation.

Yes, I know there are a bunch of people who talk about intermittent fasting (I did it myself for about a year). But let’s consider the following: The National Weight Control Registry is a United States register of people (18 years or older) who have lost at least 30 lb of weight and kept it off for at least one year. Members lost weight by a wide variety of methods, but the one commonality was that almost all of the registry members ate breakfast.

Pretty simple habit – but one that in my experience several people don’t do.

So what’s your own “brake” that you need to release? Are you a breakfast skipper? Are you a program-hopper – who switches programs every time something new appears? Do you design your own programs – based around your favorite exercises only?

One of my own personal “brakes” is meal frequency. I get busy, or caught up doing something – writing an article, or reading something etc. And I forget to eat.

I could add in several doses of creatine, beta-alanine and/or any supplement you can think of, a structured workout program – but I’d be unlikely to get the same benefits as I do when my meal frequency is optimal.

“If someone hands you a million dollars, you’d better hurry up and become a millionaire. A very rich man once said, “If you took all the money in the world and divided it equally among everybody, it would soon be back in the same pockets it was before.”
–Jim Rohn

“Rich people think differently from poor and middle-class people. They think differently about money, wealth, themselves, other people, and pretty well every other facet of life.”
— T. Harv Eker

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I saw a movie on Showtime a few months ago called “Reversal of Fortune”.

The documentary film makers followed a homeless man around for a week or so. At the end of the week – they gave him $100,000. For a homeless man – living under a bridge – this is clearly a life changing sum. They even paid for a financial counselor.

Within six months he had less than $5000 left. Within nine months he was back on the streets – homeless. Owing more money than before.

The morale of the story I suppose is that the homeless man’s attitude to money didn’t change. You need to invest that money – or at least continue to make money – or look to budget. The difference between this man living on the streets and not living on the streets was his attitude, choices and behaviors – not just the $100K.

Fitness and your health can be a lot like this also.

Imagine if you woke up tomorrow – with your ideal body… looking and feeling exactly how you want…

What would you do differently to maintain it?

Maybe what you would do differently might involve changing your exercise habits, or your eating habits.

Then why not start doing that now? Make the changes in behavior first…